Nuns give meditation tips

by Karen Jonas, San Bernadino County Sun, July 21, 2008

POMONA, CA (USA) -- A bell rings. The voices of four nuns fill the air. They kneel and rise again. After they have finished their chant, they fold blankets over their legs and begin meditation.

Such is a typical scene at the Middle Land Chan Monastery.

The Buddhist monastery opened in April and offers free meditation classes in English every Tuesday night and in Chinese on Thursday nights. The monastery also will offer free Mandarin classes on Saturday afternoons starting this weekend.

The monastery houses four nuns with varied backgrounds, but the same goal: to help people realize that they will be happier if they can calm their minds and live with less stress.

The nuns meditate every morning and invite others to do so with them on various days during the week.

The scriptures of Buddhism are called sutras, which are chanted aloud during the ceremony. These teach people the path to enlightenment.

The abbess or head nun is Jian Tai Shi (all of the nuns have the same first and last names, so they are referred to by their middle name). By becoming a dentist, she was following her father, a dentist in Taiwan.